"When it comes to feeding back information to the player from a game controller, we still rely on a vibration unit inside the controller. It can 'beat' in many different ways, but is quite limited if you want to give a very specific response to what's happening in any given game. A team of engineers at the University of Utah think they can do better, and have developed a new tactile feedback thumbpad of sorts. If used as part of a game controller, it will supplement vibration feedback by stretching the user's skin on their thumb tips in very specific ways."